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Elderly Women
By peace | April 25, 2007
Can you eat in peace when you are eating at food courts, hawker centres or Kopi Tiam? There is increasing number of ‘sales people’ who approach you when you are eating in these places. These people are mostly the handicapped people, and nowadays more elderly.
For most of the time that I had visit the public food centres, the most number of such people might be one or two at most. Nowadays, there is another type of elderly who do not sell tissue paper anymore. These elderly approach every table for empty cans.
There was once where this old woman approached me several times, at least three times, right from the start when I opened my canned drink. She walked to me, stretched out her hands, as if ready to take my cans away. But I had not even finished drinking — not even half of it! I told her ‘No’ and that I still want to drink. Minutes later, she again came to me. I told her again, and then later the same thing happen. She was at a constant look out for cans. After I told her about mine, she turned and went to other table.
It was distracting and irritating. But I do not blame her. Today, I saw three elderly women at a Kopi Tiam, each taking a white big plastic bag, to collect empty cans. As soon as people left the table, they approached the table. I witness one old woman, just in front of me, asking the dish collector, to give him the empty cans. The rest of the two old women were ‘patrolling’ for empty cans too. It was such a competitive ‘business’ for them.
But I really do not blame them for doing all these. It just bring me some reflections and some thoughts, whether I would be like them in the future, or even my parents? Of course nobody would want to do this. They need courage to do all these. And who would like to do such kind of work if they have other alternatives! They should be spending their time with grandchildren, or strolling in the park for their age. But we do not know what really gone wrong with their children or with their lives. Everybody has their own difficulties and own story to tell. We do not need to ‘cut off’ or be cruel to even exterminate what they are doing now, for they are too fighting for their own survival. It is not a crime, they are not doing anything wrong!
The lesson to learn is, if you do not want a life like that, then you ought to save money now, plan for retirement. Another lesson is, even if you do not have enough retirement fund, do not give up hope, there is always a way out. As long as you have courage, you are brave enough, you can do anything. You won’t be starved to death.
I have not written at Helium for quite a while. Now that I am feeling better, I have written one article at Helium :
Self-reflection: Conversations with myself
People are all around us. No man is an island. We need to interact with people everyday. How we treat people, how we talk, react, our action, etc, we cannot see ourselves unless we stand in front of the mirror. Unless someone tells us, we may not know our flaws or our good points at times.
What goes around comes around. For every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction. For every action that we do, there is an equal resultant force. Energy is transferred from a place to another. It cannot be destroyed. If you throw the ball hard on the wall, it will bounce back to you at what distance, it would depend on how much strength you had used. If you throw the ball hard enough, it will bounce back to you at a greater force, faster, harder and further away. Similarly, in life, how you throw the ball, affect how the ball come back to you.
Since we cannot see ourselves when interacting with people, we have to constantly reflect on our actions. We must always do self-reflection, ask ourselves, why people around you treat you in this way? Why people around you is doing this thing to you? Why does this thing happen to you? What if I do this and do that? Who are the victims in this situation? Who can help me? Who should I share this news with? All these are examples of questions that we can ask ourselves when doing self-reflection. These are the Wh- questions — who, what, which, whom, and how.
Always look around you. If you see certain things that you do not like, then you should ask yourself what you can do so that such things will not happen to you in future. This is ‘deep’ thinking, thinking and talking with yourself. It is through having self-reflection, which is conversations with yourself that you can have better control of our lives. Through self-reflection, we will appreciate nature more and we appreciate the people around us more. For by doing so, we tend to see that we are imperfect human beings just like what we see in people around you.
We can control how we behave, and what we do, our actions can be controlled. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. The people standing in front of you, talking to you are your mirror image.
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